Biologist's Lens
The Uniqueness of the Individual. By 1' Medawar. (Methuen, 18s.) SOME of the best contemporary writing bY, standards is produced by scientists and it rs indication of the portentous snobbery of literary world that a Sartre rehash, admit*: the TLS to be almost unreadable and °I conceivable general interest, should be fa widely reviewed while a collection of essaYs first-class biologist, ranging over the last ten and dealing with some of the central probi of his subject, should be overlooked by the ,, people who, in any other age, would ' recognised the proper place of science in the Id We all like reading about ourselves, and Fr° o sor Medawar speculates with a Darwinian brea it of philosophy on matters which inescapablY cern everyone : on the nature of ageing `natural death'; on man's imperfections; grafting and the horrifying isolationism makes our skin-cells treat anyone else's as elle and die rather than co-operate. A good biologist ranges over the living v,' with an impartial yet passionate attentive' Professor Medawar's mind swings from general to the particular with cinematic very selectiveness, widens to take in the whole Pcl o tion of a species, contracts to the focus microscopic cell, enlarges our ideas of imninrI,a by relating it to the surviving connective-41 cells in a sausage and sums up a long and c!i argued inquiry into the nature of life and II with the Promethean reflection : those most pressing fear it is that they will be lonei living into their graves can have their doh resolved : they will be.' JEAN 10
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